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We lived in a trailer for parts of my childhood and then in some rented houses but we always had a roof over our heads.Growing up, I learned about poverty. Other people we knew who were poor all had a place to live,like us. Some of their houses were cold in the winter or didn’t have running water and one family had newspaper lining their walls. I didn’t know about homelessness then but I knew what it meant to be poor.

The first time I actually saw a homeless person was in the 1980’s. My ex-husband and I were hauling new trucks to Los Angeles. The bus we were riding home went through downtown LA. I couldn’t stop looking at the people lying and sitting in cardboard boxes on the sidewalk. By this time, I had seen homelessness on TV but it is never as real as when you see it with your own eyes.

Some years later working with the homeless in a feeding kitchen and a couple of other ministries, I was able to look them in the eye and see how much like me they were. I discovered a need so deep that it scars our world. According to an article on PBS.org,a general description of homelessness is “a person who lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate night time residence.” (PBS.org, 2009). The US Department of Housing and Urban Development says, “there were 643,067 sheltered and unsheltered homeless persons nationwide as of January 2009. Additionally, about 1.56 million people used an emergency shelter or a transitional housing program during the 12-month period between October 1, 2008 and September 30, 2009. This number suggests that roughly 1 in every 200 persons in the US used the shelter system at some point in that period.[5]” (Wikipedia) These images are cause for action.

This blog will record findings on my research that will examine the causes of homelessness and the entrepreneurial solutions.